Essential drugs, patents and compulsory licenses: Doha is not the answer

The Doha Declaration (World Trade Organization, 2001) is often used as the basis for arguments to protect global public health, and to trust that compulsory licenses can do so. But one should not be deceived about this proposal. This is an agreement promoted by the so-called Big Pharma at the very same time it was violating the rights of developing countries that refused to enforce patents of pharmaceutical products. The purpose of this paper is to show that pharmaceutical patents produce proprietary rights that are clearly incompatible with the universal right to health, and to a certain extent the right to life. For this reason, it is absurd to claim that there is a competition between the human right to health with this supposed proprietary right to the protection of intellectual property, even if one accepts the Doha amendments.